[quote=Arraya] Claims in the previous week were revised to an increase of 13,000 to 446,000 compared with the initial estimate of an increase of 11,000 to 444,000. A Labor Department official said that there were more estimates this week because of the holiday on Monday. In addition, some of the increase may be due to administrative delays in reporting claims since the Christmas and New Year holidays.[/quote]

Did they release that little fact back durring the Holidays? Cause I remember alot of talk about how things were all getting better and using the ‘falling’ unemployment numbers to support that argument. Not counting claims doesnt count as ‘falling’ unemployment in my book, and the data sets should have been discarded or highly suspect with large bold letters saying “processing delays make this analysis troublesome and will lead to revision.”

Otherwise, it is just a start of the year stastical fluke, or political cover. It could be either, but explaining away ‘bad’ data cause of ‘errors outside of our control’ after the fact just rubs me the wrong way.